


The Interwebs

by suspiciousteapot



Series: Imagine Claire and Jamie ficlets [15]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Gen, Imagine teaching your 18th century parent how to use a computer, and you thought we had it hard with our parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 11:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7572787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suspiciousteapot/pseuds/suspiciousteapot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anonymous: Imagine Jamie using the Internet for the first time ever</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Interwebs

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt sent to imagineclaireandjamie on tumblr. 
> 
> As always, I'd love to hear what you thought, so drop me a comment below :)

Jamie circled the metal plate curiously. It lay innocently on the kitchen table, shining in the morning light as though God himself were smiling down upon it. At least, that’s how Brianna seemed to view the thing. He himself was more convinced it was a gift from a far lower realm, from what Brianna told him the thing could do.  

He looked from the bitten apple engraving to Brianna, quirking an eyebrow. “A bite from the fruit of knowledge, is it? Adam and Eve were damned for that, ye ken.”

Claire burst out laughing, and Jamie shot her a rueful look from across the table. 

“Aye, ye’re laughing now, but I remember someone who couldna remember how to spell “help,” even after two years wi’ me.”

She waved him off, wiping her eyes. 

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Brianna interjected, frowning at the wee machine, “but anyways you shouldn’t be so suspicious. It’s an amazing tool, I promise. Just try it.”

Jamie doubted this, but Brianna seemed so anxious that he learn about it, and he supposed it was only fair that he learn something about her world.

“Well, you have to open it first.” Bree instructed, voice tinged with both impatience and humour.

“Open metal?” Had the lass lost her mind?

He watched, astonished, as she easily reached for the side of the plate and opened it like a metal book. It must be hinged somehow, though he couldn’t see it.

She looked back at him expectantly, so he pushed at the top to get it to lie flat.

“No!” Both Claire and Brianna cried out instantly, jumping up from their seats.

“Da, you can’t do that.” Brianna said, stopping his hand. “The screen is meant to point up. That way you can see what’s on it.”

“Mmmmphm,” Jamie snorted, eyeing the dark screen dubiously.

Ever since he’d come through the stones, his mind had been forced to reckon with machines past the wildest imaginings of even the most fantastical of writers. His lass had informed him that they were called computers, and promised to teach him how to make use of them, as they were apparently the backbone of modern society. Jamie didn’t see how that could be, but then, he hadn’t understood how men could fly either, yet he’d done so himself (at least, Claire told him he had. All he remembered was the inside of a paper bag.) 

Claire had once been as mystified by such contraptions as he was, the faerie stones having taken her to a time in advance of even her own when she’d left before Culloden. However the lass had grown up in this time. To her, these _computers_ were as normal as a sword was to him. 

“Okay, so now pushing this button,” she pushed a wee button with a strange symbol on it and the screen lit up, brighter than any candle, and earily blue. “Turns it on.”

She pushed quickly on many of the wee buttons with letters, and to his shock Jamie saw dots appear in a rectangle on the top plate, which now bore a picture of a kindly looking dog.

“That’s Smokey, our old dog.” Brianna explained.

“That’s no what’s confusing me lass. How did ye get his portrait on here? It wasna here a second ago, and I’d wager on my life there was no sheet hiding it.”

Jamie waited patiently as Brianna tapped her fingers beside the computer.

“You just… you take a picture and upload it. It’s like… copying the portrait. Kind of. And the screen won’t always look the same. That’s kind of the point. It’s like a book, but sometimes you can’t see the pages turning.”

They started at each other in mutual confusion. 

“Here, perhaps this will make it a bit clearer. Consider this picture of Smokey like the cover of the book.” She looked at him to make sure he was following, and he nodded solemnly. He could almost grasp that. Books sometimes had wee portraits in them. 

“Now, take the mouse…”

Jamie looked around the table, reaching for the wee knife he kept in his pocket.

“Mouse, where?”

“No, Da, this is the mouse.” Brianna indicated a white, half-egg looking thing that seemed to be attached to the computer with a rope made of strange-feeling material. 

“The mouse? Why do ye call it that? It doesna squeak!” He jerked his hand back. “Does it?”

Claire’s head was now resting on the table, her back shaking with silent mirth. Brianna shot her a look that Jamie was pleased to recognize from his own face.

“No, it doesn’t. Promise. I have no clue why it’s called that. Someone just had some fun naming it, I guess.”

Hesitantly Jamie placed his hand back over the mouse. Brianna placed her hand over his and gently pulled the mouse along the table. Jamie gasped. 

“The wee arrow! It’s moving!“

“Yep. That’s what we want it to do.” Brianna explained. “It’s called a cursor. It’s… like our hand. Because we can’t touch the pages of the book with our own hands. At least, not on a laptop.”

This last comment had Jamie more confused that ever, but he chose to ignore it. There was more than enough to learned about with just one of these machines.

“Okay, so when we click on this,” she depressed his finger, and the mousey made a soft ‘click’ noise, which was oddly satisfying, as it was the first word that seemed to live up to what it did.

As she did so, the colourful ball in portrait that their _cursor_  was on top of began to bounce. 

“Ye canna have me believe that isna magic.” Jamie implored.

“It’s not, promise. We just opened a web page is all.”

“A _web page?_ ”

“Yeah, it’s a… part of this big thing we call the internet. Basically it’s like all the libraries and pubs and stuff in the world connected together as though it’s all part of a big web.”

Jamie eyed the white page dubiously. “I dinna see how a spider could make such a vast thing, nor why it would let us keep pages of information in its web.”

Bree shot him a look that reminded him immensely of his sister.

Yet his mind was still grappling with what she’d told him. The more he thought about it, the more outlandish it seemed “ _Ah dhia._ Where is it all stored? Surely all the books in the world canna fit in such a wee thing.”

“They’re not really in it, you see. Most of it’s stored in the cloud.” She looked hopeful, her eyes begging him to understand, but he was more muddled than ever.

“Ye store books in the sky?” How is the world had man managed this in a mere 300 years? “How does the wee box show us them if they’re up there?”

He ran a hand through hair in frustration

“No! It’s not in the actual sky. I -” She broke off and gestured at her mother. “Mama, can you try? You were computer illiterate too at some point.”        

Claire smiled gently and threaded her fingers through Jamie’s, squeezing his hand in support. 

“She’s right, I was. But now you’ve seen something of it at least, so why don’t we call it a day and take a walk?” 

Jamie sighed in relief. One day he’d figure out the secrets of mice that opened webs in the clouds, for his daughter’s sake if nothing else, but for today he’d had quite enough of the future.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
